Wednesday, 13 June 2012

NGOs:

Non-government organizations with their advantage of non-rigid,
locality specific, felt need-based, beneficiary oriented and committed nature
of service have established multitude of roles which can effect rural
development (Bhaskar and Geethakutty 2001)[1]. Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) have become quite prominent in the field of international
development in recent decades. But the term NGO encompasses a vast category of
groups and organizations.

The World Bank, for example, defines NGOs as “private organizations
that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor,
protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community
development.” A World Bank Key Document, Working With NGOs, adds, “In wider
usage, the term NGO can be applied to any non-profit organization which is
independent from government. NGOs are typically value-based organizations which
depend, in whole or in part, on charitable donations and voluntary service. Although
the NGO sector has become increasingly professionalized over the last two
decades, principles of altruism and voluntarism remain key defining
characteristics.[2]”

Different sources refer to these groups with different names, using
NGOs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Private Voluntary Organizations
(PVOs), charities, non-profits charities/charitable organizations, third sector
organizations and so on.

These terms encompass a wide variety of groups, ranging from
corporate-funded think tanks, to community groups, grassroots activist groups,
development and research organizations, advocacy groups, operational,
emergency/humanitarian relief focused, and so on. While there may be
distinctions in specific situations, this section deals with a high level look
at these issues, and so these terms may be used interchangeably, and sometimes
using NGOs as the umbrella term.

Since the 1970s, it has been noted how there are more
non-governmental organizations than ever before trying to fill in the gaps that
governments either will not, or cannot.

The above-mentioned World Bank document points out that “Since the
mid-1970s, the NGO sector in both developed and developing countries have
experienced exponential growth…. It is now estimated that over 15 percent of total
overseas development aid is channeled through NGOs.” That is, roughly $8
billion dollars. Recognizing that statistics are notoriously incomplete, the
World Bank adds that there are an estimated 6,000 to 30,000 national NGOs in
developing countries alone, while the number of community-based organizations
in the developing world number in the hundreds of thousands.

Such organizations must operate as a non-profit group. While in that
respect, NGOs are meant to be politically independent, in reality it is a
difficult task, because they must receive funding from their government, from
other institutions, businesses and/or from private sources. All or some of
these can have direct or indirect political weight on decisions and actions
that NGOs make.

Professor of anthropology, Richard Robbins, in his book, Global Problems and the Culture of
Capitalism (Allyn and Bacon, 2002, Second Edition), suggests a few
reasons why NGOs have become increasingly important in the past decade or so.
Amongst them (from pp. 128 to 129):

1.The end of the Cold War
made it easier for NGOs to operate

2.Communications advances,
especially the Internet, have helped create new global communities and bonds
between like-minded people across state boundaries

3.Increased resources,
growing professionalism and more employment opportunities in NGOs

4.The media’s ability to
inform more people about global problems leads to increased awareness where the
public may demand that their governments take action of some kind.

5.Perhaps most important,
Robbins suggests, is that some believe NGOs have developed as part of a larger,
neoliberal economic and political agenda. Shifts in economic and political
ideology have lent to increasing support of NGOs from governments and official
aid agencies in response.

Role of NGOs:

As the limitations of state-sponsored, project based, top-down
development became apparent, the 1980s and the 1990s saw increasing attention
focused on private, professional development organizations and the voluntary
sector by development agencies. This so-called third sector is now widely seen
as containing potentially viable alternatives to conventional approaches to
development and relief work.

At one level the changing level of support given to NGOs suggests a
significant shift in development practice, for funds are increasingly being
channeled to organizations on the outside of the ‘mainstream’ which often offer
radical new approaches to how the work of development discourse is far from
homogeneous or rigidly fixed. At the same time, however, some critics argue
that rather than enabling NGOs to change the agenda, the increased funding of
NGOs by Northern aid agencies has simply brought a potential threat to them
under control.

It is seen that NGOs are able to allocate resources and services
more efficiently and to reach people more effectively than state institutions
(Paul 1991). NGOs themselves have claimed that their comparative advantage is
derived from a stronger commitment and motivation, coupled with a better
ability to form good- quality relationships with people, compared with
government agencies. For example, Bebbington (1991) points out in the context
of agriculture development work, NGOs are more willing to ask farmers what they
think, to take their farming practices seriously, and consequently to orient
technology adaptation and transfer towards real concerns. The origins,
activities and performance of NGOs have varied dramatically between and within
different country contexts, where particular state histories have permitted
varying levels of ‘space’ within which NGOs can exist and work. In
countrieswhere a politically repressive
regime has prevented local levels of organization, many NGOs have existed as
radical, underground organizations, as in the case of the Philippines under
President Ferdinand Marcos. Where the state has sought assistance with service
delivery or project implementation, frequently with donor agency support, NGOs
have often merged seamlessly with mainstream government structures. In
communist Albania, the notion of a civil society with its arena for
organization outside the state hardly existed at all and NGOs were unknown.

NGOs themselves are a diverse set of actors, with origins in both
North and South. There are important differences in scale and between local,
national and international spheres of activity. Some NGOs carry out their own
project-based development activities, which can range from the direct provision
of services (credit, agricultural inputs, health-care and education) to group formation
and consciousness-raising, both of which aim to make people aware of new
possibilities for self determined change. Others do not work directly with
beneficiaries but instead fund, train or otherwise support partner
organizations at the grassroots. There is also an increasing number of activist
NGOs who see their work in terms of lobbying, information exchange or advocacy
aimed at changing the wider policy environment. NGOs are becoming important not
just in terms of their ability tow work directly with people, but also in terms
of their potential contribution to the strengthening of civil society –
democracy, legal rights and access to information (Clark 1990).

NGOs have claimed, with some justification, that they can work more
closely with poor people than similar government agencies can (Edwards and
HUlme, 1992; Bebbington and Farrington, 1993; Clark, 1990). Critics,
however,have drawn attention to the
prevalence of a number of NGO mythis and show, with some success, that these
supposed advantages are in fact largely unsubstantiated (Tendler, 1982).
Furthermore, there is a growing radical critique of NGOs which arues that,
rather than promoting deep rooted change, they actually preserve the status que
by setting up a system of patronage based on the flow of development
assistance, which undermies and depoliticizes local grassroots organization
(Hashemi, 1989; Arellano-Lopez and Petras 1994; Tvedt 1995).

In recent years as well, development and environmental NGOs for
example, are learning that they can be more effective, and their work can have
more positive effects, if they work with the actual communities and help them
to empower themselves. Working at the grassroots level helps to provide
assistance directly at the source. Often corrupt governments can intercept much
assistance so this approach is sometimes favored. However, there is still much
that needs improving. For example, a study commissioned by the Finnish foreign
ministry and co-ordinated by researchers at Helsinki University to study issues
of bilateral development suggested that there is an inequality in the relations
between organizations of the North and the South. The study points to
“inequalities despite the shift from the imperious paternalism in development
aid practices during the 1990s” as described by Inter Press Service (IPS)[3].

NGOs and
Anthropological approach:

Many NGOs working directly with the poor have taken what might be
described as an ‘anthropological approach’ to their field activities. Rather
than working from the top downwards, many of the more effective NGOs have
evolved from local communities and draw their field staff from the areas where
they are working. Unlike many governmental or donor projects, they spend time
discussing local interests with different sections of the community in order to
build up a picture of the dynamic relationships whicy exist among different
groups and classes. A distinctive NGO organizational style has emerged: field
staff are encouraged to spend time with local people and pass information about
their needs and interests to the NGO in order to inform and shape future
policy; in addition, less rigid boundaries are visible between junior and
senior staff. This contrasts with the more rigid, directive roles usually taken
by government in development activities, in which officials often subordinate
development agendas to the more pressing demands of control and authority
(Fowler 1990).

This responsiveness to local needs can go beyond mere service
delivery. In agriculture, NGOs have sometimes been able to undertake
client-oriented research which has been based on agendas set by local group
members and to promote technologies which meet locally generated needs,
especially among the low income sections of the population which are frequently
passed over by formal government agricultural efforts. The use of local
institutions and practices as the starting point has often proved fruitful
basis for innovation.

Some NGO work also resembles the old dream of advocacy anthropology
in which outsiders try to promote the rights of the communities with which they
work either during local conflicts (e.g. with local elites) or in the wider
state context (land rights or the legal rights of women). NGOs find that if
they wish to influence the big picture, they cannot ignore what the government
is doing. At the same time, government agencies increasingly see NGOs as a
source of dynamism and innovation and are seeking to draw upon their services,
either by forming partnerships or in less satisfactory cases by cooption.

Issues:

Just as the role of anthropologists as development participants
raises a number of uncomfortable questions, there are similar dilemmas to be
faced by those who argue that NGOs constitute an all-purpose solution to the
problems of development practice. How accountable are these NGOs in reality,
and do they merely perform better than government agencies because they receive
proportionately more resources for the task they undertake? Do NGOs simply
reproduce patronage relations at the local level by becoming the new purveyors
of state resources in the countryside? Are NGOs there fore weakening the state
further and perpetuating the weakness by drawing scarce staff and other
resources away from it? However, these questions have remained unanswered.
Meanwhile the most interesting fact regarding NGOs is that many have radical
origins and are engaging critically with the prevailing development discourse,
occasionally influencing donor and government attitudes and practices along the
way.

Its Kaleidoscope

A cotraveler who seats endlessly on a chair that we tend to call world and moves through wonder places. Try not to move from the chair, transcending time. Try to unearth silences and capture through multiple lenses. Behind the corner of my eyes there are things I can not see... things I do not understand...
So here I am with words to share and become a cotraveler from my being. Yes, so many things to express but not genuinely gifted with skills.